Daughter of Time
by Peradan
Summary: Leia Organa, fifty times.


_**A/N**: This isn't remotely chronological, ignores just about everything that isn't in the movies or scripts, and generally abuses the semi-colon to squeak past the one-sentence requirement._

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><p><strong>1: Air<strong>

Nothing could make Leia regret the knowledge that her blood flowed in Luke's veins, but when he left to find his father, _Vader's son_ became _Vader's daughter_ and she felt as if the very breath were being crushed out of her lungs.

**2: Apples**

Banai offered her an unfamiliar fruit, and after a long day in the desert she was glad to accept, her teeth tearing through the bright red skin and white flesh.

**3: Beginning**

She was restless in those last days, kicking with her brother; still, it was better than _after_, when the familiar thump against her ear, the sense of him always, always with her, were ripped away and there was nothing but strange voices and her own screams.

**4: Bugs**

Leia may not have been a particularly skittish girl, but she hated everything that crept or crawled - especially when they were humans.

**5: Coffee**

Han sometimes made caf for her, when he was struck by one of his considerate fits, and Leia didn't have the heart to tell him how much she hated it.

**6: Dark**

Leia never let herself forget Calobrin, because she mostly couldn't remember it: just the haze of rage, receding only when the children's attackers fell beneath her lightsaber, and the distant thought that she understood her father much better, now.

**7: Despair**

The closest Leia ever came to giving up was the moment when Jabba's collar closed around her neck; instead, she promised herself, _As soon as Luke gets here, we're going to make them all pay._

**8: Doors**

It was only a few months after Luke's official resignation that Leia found herself at the ruins of the old Jedi Temple, planning repairs even as she stepped through the great vacant doorway.

**9: Drink**

Leia couldn't help but wonder how sipping wine with Pooja (_our cousin_) seemed more charged and anxious than their days in the Imperial Senate had ever been.

**10: Duty**

Through all the years of the war, Leia upheld her responsibility to the Alliance, but afterwards, as the scrambling Rebellion transformed into a proper, ponderous, government, she imagined spending the rest of her life discussing policy with Mon Mothma and General Madine and just _couldn't._

**11: Earth**

Leia knelt before the graves, wondering vaguely when Luke had put up (Vader's) the last, and let her fingers trail through the sand, unsure what she'd expected to find here.

**12: End**

She forced herself to look at the names of her . . . relatives, to commit them to her memory with the other dead, and recoiled from the dates: all these people's lives were over by fifty, and the last was youngest of them all - fearsome, ageless Darth Vader had been a month short of forty-five when he died.

**13: Fall**

Leia's hands shook as she tucked Lyra in, stroking her blonde hair, but they tightened into fists when a chillingly familiar voice said, "If you intend to turn into me, you've made an _excellent_ start."

**14: Fire**

Obi-Wan began to appear to her almost as soon as she showed up in the Jedi Temple, encouraging her to feel the Force flowing through her, like a stream: but her brother and, much later, her father, said it didn't flow in them so much as _burn_, and that made everything easy.

**15: Flexible**

Leia spent hours in the library, poring over the records Vader had saved for his own inscrutable reasons, and afterwards informed her brother that while they might be able to salvage _something_ from the old ways, she had no intention of swearing a vow of celibacy.

**16: Flying**

When Leia remembered racing through the Endor forest with Luke, exhilaration pounding in their veins, she thought of Vader decimating their forces in the attack on the Death Star, and knew why her instinctive gift for flying had always upset her father so much.

**17: Food**

In the Temple, the three of them divided up their responsibilities neatly: Leia managed most of the administrative concerns, Luke handled everything that required his greater mastery of the Force, and Han kept them fed.

**18: Foot**

It was almost a year before Leia could hear the 501st marching around the Temple without reaching for her blaster.

**19: Grave**

Every year, Leia paid her respects to her family: she went to the Graveyard of Alderaan to mourn her parents and her people, then to Naboo, where her mother was entombed, and finally to the line of graves beside a charred homestead, even if she couldn't say anything more meaningful than "this feels stupid, we were just screaming at each other last week."

**20: Green**

The new planet was smaller than Alderaan, but it was lush and varied, and the few million Alderaanians left didn't need that much space, anyway.

**21: Head**

Leia saw no reason why her position in the Order should prevent her from taking up her duty to her people, and though she was crowned as Queen Leia of New Alderaan, most Alderaanians remembered her as the Jedi Queen.

**22: Hollow**

Leia was never consumed by grief over anything - there was always a new battle to oversee, a new strategy to devise, a new decision to make, but even so, she sometimes felt something must be missing in her.

**23: Honour**

When Leia thought of family, she thought of her father in his Senatorial robes, her dimly-remembered mothers, her brother, never more than a thought away, and she wanted to acknowledge them all.

**24: Hope**

For the first time, she signed her full name - _Leia Skywalker Organa_ - and hoped nobody would ever guess all it meant.

**25: Light**

Sunshine poured through the ruins of the great hall, warming her skin and hair, and Leia decided that their new design would provide for more of it.

**26: Lost**

Leia had always rather idolized Senator Amidala, and her dead mother had been held up to her as a pillar of virtue; now it turned out that the real woman had been both of those, and neither.

**27: Metal**

The first time Princess Leia met Lord Vader, she was grimy and angry and her toe hurt from kicking the speeder and if she hadn't crashed into the bushes first, she might have run him over.

**28: New**

Her father hurried out, horrified to be late, and even more horrified when he found Leia holding forth on the failings of her vehicle to a clearly amused Vader.

**29: Old**

Of all the times that Leia had cursed her blood, she never meant it more than when Han died in comfortable old age, and her own life stretched out further than even Luke could see.

**30: Peace**

The war ended with the Battle of Endor: not officially, but dozens of systems threw their support behind the Alliance as soon as they got word, the Imperial warlords began fighting amongst themselves, those under Vader's direct command defected, and within five years Leia was personally welcoming Mon Mothma to Coruscant.

**31: Poison**

Leia understood the power of the Dark Side now, and could imagine how it had twisted her father, but it was years before she could do more than pity her mother, and perhaps consider that Palpatine had poisoned her life, too.

**32: Pretty**

Leia couldn't keep herself from going back to the holos, wondering what had gone on behind her mother's beautiful face, what could have led an otherwise principled, clear-sighted senator to close her eyes to murder, what weakness she might have passed on to _her_.

**33: Rain**

The sound of water pattering against the windows came as a relief; Leia made determined conversation about the weather on every planet but Alderaan, and their relatives stopped looking at her as if _Padmé's daughter_ were carved into her skin.

**34: Regret**

Leia wasn't one for apologies; it was probably one of the less objectionable qualities she had from her father, from whom an admission of regret was comparable to other people gnashing their teeth and pulling their hair out.

**35: Roses**

It was Ryoo who took her to see the great gardens of Maren, and told her that Padmé had always wanted to see them; "it wasn't safe," she added after a moment's thought, "so I don't think she ever did."

**36: Secret**

Leia didn't want to keep her relationship to Luke hidden, as if he were an illicit lover rather than her _brother_, but she knew he'd insist on acknowledging Vader's sacrifice, and maybe he could be Vader's son but he didn't answer to anyone; she _couldn't_ be Vader's daughter - it'd been bad enough just to be his occasional ally in the Senate.

**37: Snakes**

Leia had no more fear of snakes than she did of most animals - namely, none - but Han was terrified of them.

**38: Snow**

Leia had gotten used to thinking of Luke as her opposite, but as they watched Artoo's final recordings and her own blank incomprehension stared out of his face, she remembered how often they'd felt naturally, uncannily aligned; if Padmé had been one of the flowing streams that Obi-Wan was always yammering on about, Luke and Leia were blizzards.

**39: Solid**

Leia sat frozen in place, her muscles tense, as if their aunt's tears might be as dangerous as blaster-fire; instead, Sola's hands closed around theirs, warm and real.

**40: Spring**

If not for Han's garden, she wouldn't even know what season it _was_, but it seemed fitting that the baby would be born in springtime - or what passed for spring here.

**41: Stable**

No less than six governments tried to unseat them from the refurbished Temple, without success, and Leia was as pleased to see more and more students trickling in as she was to hear that the Alliance was about to take Coruscant.

**42: Strange**

Belatedly, Leia realized that it'd be easier to forgive her mother if she'd hero-worshipped Senator Amidala a little less, or hadn't heard herself compared to her quite so constantly, and it struck her that this must be a tiny fraction of what Luke went through after Bespin.

**43: Summer**

New Alderaan could be warm in the summer, but Leia steadfastly kept to her royal gowns and Jedi robes.

**44: Taboo**

After a few bitter arguments, Leia agreed to stop insisting that Luke had been adopted, and he agreed to stop using the word "real" to refer to _any_ of their family members.

**45: Ugly**

The truth, Leia came to realize, was anything but beautiful: it was ugly, ferocious, more than most people could bear, and now she thought she could forgive her mother for being one of those people, for being unwilling to let it crush her when the Republic needed her whole.

**46: War**

All of the children were too young to remember the war, but Han and Leia's twins were born two weeks after the signing of the treaty; _Bail_ was all the more suitable for their son and Han wanted _Leia_ for a girl, but she took one look at her newborn daughter and announced, "Her name is Padmé."

**47: Water**

Padmé's hair grew into wild dark curls, and her blue eyes stayed blue - like the sea, strangers and relatives said, but Leia thought of her brother and father, and the blazing Tatooine skies, and knew better.

**48: Welcome**

Leia was generally the one to welcome new students to the Academy; she was stern enough to keep them in line, and her voice didn't scare them like Luke's did.

**49: Winter**

"Luke told me about the time you were snowed in at Dlath," Leia said tartly, making everyone laugh except for Luke himself, and then she realized - he'd done nothing of the kind; she just _knew_.

**50: Wood**

Han's rough chair flew across the room with a flick of her mind, and Leia knew she would never forget this moment, the Force moving through her, its power nestled in her hands, ready to do - _anything_.


End file.
